A place to interact with political activist and former Libertarian Gubernatorial Candidate, Loretta Nall. This blog covers Alabama politics, drug policy reform with emphasis on marijuana laws, medical marijuana, prison reform, voting rights, equal rights for gays and lesbians, ballot access reform and other social justice oriented issues.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Take Action During Medical Marijuana Week

DrugSense FOCUS Alert #342 - Wednesday, 14 February 2007

February 14th is not just Valentines Day, but a day for drug policy reform activists to feel optimistic about the state of affairs for reforming failed drug policies, especially those related to medicinal marijuana.

On Monday, February 12th, the magazine Neurology published a study by Dr. Donald Abrams, which indicates that smoked marijuana effectively reduces chronic pain for people living with HIV/AIDS. The study builds on other international evidence and a 1999 Institute of Medicine report, "Marijuana and Medicine, Assessing the Science Base."

See: http://www.safeaccessnow.org/article.php?list=type&type=265

Also on Monday, a DEA Administrative Law Judge issued an 87-page ruling in favor of removing a government obstruction to medicinal cannabis research in the United States. The decision may lead to Dr. Lyle Craker of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst being able to grow high potency medicinal grade marijuana to supply to researchers.

See: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07/n174/a01.html

The Media Awareness Project joins with Americans for Safe Access in encouraging you to write letters to your local newspapers about both of the above reports. Please see:

Join Steve and other LTE writing friends Tuesday evenings at 9 p.m. Eastern, 8 p.m. Central, or 7 p.m. Pacific for a roundtable discussion of how to write LTEs that are likely to be printed.

See http://mapinc.org/resource/teamspeak/ for easy directions on how to download, install and use the free TeamSpeak software. The TeamSpeak software is easy to download and install. It runs on Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems.

Discussion is conducted with live Voice (microphone and speakers are all that is needed) and also via text messaging.

Please post a copy of your letter to the sent letter list (sentlte@mapinc.org) if you are subscribed, or by E-mailing a copy to heath@mapinc.org if you are not subscribed. Your letter will then be forwarded to the list so others may learn from your efforts.

Subscribing to the Sent LTE list will help you to review other sent LTEs for new ideas or approaches. To subscribe to the Sent LTE mailing list see